Douglas DC-3 = Tragedy of Flight 777 = 3 skins
- Put in C-47 skins folder -
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Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943), better known by his stage name Leslie Howard, was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer.
He is perhaps best remembered for his role as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind (1939), but he was uncomfortable with Hollywood and returned to England to help with the World War II effort. He starred in a number of World War II films including 49th Parallel (1941), Pimpernel Smith (1941), and The First of the Few (1942, known in the U.S. as Spitfire), the latter two of which he also directed and co-produced.
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Howard died in 1943 when he was flying to Bristol, UK, from Lisbon, Portugal, on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines/BOAC Flight 777. The aircraft, a Douglas DC-3, was shot down by a German Junkers Ju 88 aircraft over the Bay of Biscay.
There were rumours that the Germans believed that UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had been in Algiers, was on board the flight. Howard's manager Alfred Chenhalls physically resembled Churchill, while Howard was tall and thin, like Churchill's bodyguard, Walter H. Thompson. Churchill himself seems to have been to blame for the spread of the rumour; in his autobiography, he expresses sorrow that a mistake about his activities might have cost Howard his life. The overwhelming majority of published specific documentation of the case, however, repudiates this rumour.
In the television series “Churchill‘s Bodyguard” it is suggested that German intelligence was in contact with members of the merchant navy in Britain and had been informed of Churchill’s departure. It’s suggested that German intelligence had known the route Churchill’s plane would later be travelling along, so had ordered an air attack against the Prime Minister. But German scouts watching the airfields of neutral countries had mistaken Leslie Howard and his manager Alfred Chenhalls (as they boarded their plane) for Churchill and his bodyguard, both men were physically very similar. Churchill’s bodyguard had remarked that this was not by any means the first time his Prime Minister had seemed agitated and suspicious of the journey ahead. The bodyguard Walter H. Thompson had written that Winston Churchill sometimes seemed clairvoyant to personal danger, it is suggested that Churchill knew of the Germans plan to shoot down his plane and so decided to move his flight to the following day.
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It is suggested that the British code breakers had decrypted several top secret Enigma codes, which detailed the assassination plan. It’s mentioned that Churchill had asked one of his men to tamper with his plane, if the plane had an engine problem it would take time to fix it. This gave Churchill an excuse not to travel at that time.
As far as anyone knew the plane was simply being inspected before their journey, no one seemed any the wiser to Churchill’s plan to stall the plane. Churchill wanted to protect any information that had been uncovered by the code breakers so that German intelligence would not suspect that their enigma machines were actually a source of vital information to British intelligence, hence the need to make it seem like Churchill’s plane had had mechanical faults.
Whether or not the code breakers were aware of the Germans sighting of Howard and Chenhalls boarding their plane remains unknown. What is known is that Howard’s plane was remarkably similar to that of Churchill‘s, the timing of Howard's take off and the route he took was remarkably similar to Churchill‘s, making it easy for the Germans to mistake the two planes.
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Howard had been traveling through Spain and Portugal, ostensibly lecturing on film, but also meeting with local propagandists and shoring up support for the Allied cause. The Germans in all probability suspected even more surreptitious activities. (German agents were active throughout Spain and Portugal, which, like Switzerland, was a crossroads for persons from both sides of the conflict, but even more accessible to Allied citizens.) Ronald Howard was convinced the order to shoot down Howard's plane came directly from Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany, who had been ridiculed in one of Howard's films and who believed Howard to be the most dangerous propagandist in the British service.
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Howard was flying on a regularly scheduled flight that did not pass over what would commonly be referred to as a war zone. The Luftwaffe records indicate that the Ju-88 Staffel was sent beyond its normal patrol area to intercept and shoot down the aircraft, even though this flight had never before been disrupted. There were about fourteen other passengers, most of them either British executives with corporate ties in Portugal, or various British, comparatively lower-ranked, government civil servants. There were also two or three children of British military personnel.
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The DC-3 was attacked by eight German Ju-88s, when normal Luftwaffe patrols in the nearest normal vicinity usually consisted of single planes. According to German documents, the plane was shot down at longitude 10.15 West, latitude 46.07 North, some 500 miles (800 km) from Bordeaux, France, and 200 miles (320 km) northwest of A Coruña, Spain. The German pilots photographed the wreckage floating in the Bay of Biscay. After the war, copies of these captured photographs were sent to Howard's family. According to author William Stevenson in his book Intrepid, however, the Germans knew about Howard's mission and ordered the plane shot down. Stevenson further claims that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the plane but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.
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In this skin package you will find the original aircraft in KLM colors (Royal Dutch Airlines 1936), nicknamed "IBIS", and the later two versions in which the aircraft escaped to Britain following the Nazi invasion of the Low Countries and was flown by the B.O.A.C. (British airlines at the time). Which of these versions of the aircraft that was shot down no one knows. But according to some researchers the camouflaged version of teh airplane is the most likely as the BOAC flew also military missions of transportation and were painted in camouflaged colors but without the RAF roundels.
SKINS Available at Mission4Todayhttp://mission4today.com/index...ame=Downloads2&c=199
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I hope you enjoy these skins and have a great flight in IL-2.
Cheers
MAX-theHitman

“There is not the slightest doubt that American airliners now surpass the designs of every other country. Without prejudice to the other fine ships, the Douglas DC 2 may be recorded as the supreme American achievement in transport design.” - Scientific American, January 1935

Once TWA took possession of the DC 1, it did not take long for them to realize they had a unique airplane. They saw a chance to recapture the market lost after the Rockne crash, so they ordered 20 more DC 1s with some improvements. Some were in the interest of enhancing performance and others for passenger comfort. Combined these changes resulted in a major redesign of the airframe.

Producing an improved DC 1 was not just a matter of mass producing the DC 1 with some assembly line changes. It meant new drawings, a mock up, and new tooling. The Wright Engine Company had just introduced their 855 hp engine, and with the increased power, Douglas could stretch the DC 1 airframe. He added two feet to the fuselage, which allowed for another row of seats. Stretching the cabin changed the centre of gravity so the wing had to be moved, effectively creating a new transport. The Douglas engineers reviewed the changes and decided to call the new aircraft the Douglas Commercial 2 or DC-2.
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TWA received the first of their DC-2s on May 14, 1934, with the delivery of ship #301. It made its first airline flight on May 18, when it flew the Columbus - Newark - Pittsburgh route.
To assure a marketplace, TWA introduced in-flight movies on the new Douglas.
“The Flying Hostess” was the first feature film. This “extra” drew even more passengers.
The DC-2 was such a success that orders poured into the Douglas Santa Monica factory. Douglas had estimated he might have to fill orders for fifty to saturate the market. To Douglas’ surprise, six months after the introduction of the DC-2, he had orders for 75.
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Douglas DC-2 – NC13711, owned by the Museum of Flight in Seattle, has finally arrived in Seattle. Restoration of this airplane began in 1982, when the airplane was leased from the Donald Douglas Museum by the Douglas Historical Foundation - primarily a group of Douglas retirees. When they towed the airplane from Santa Monica to Long Beach, it was a basket case. Thousands of volunteer man-hours over a 20 year period were contributed by many Douglas retirees towards its restoration. After its sale to the Museum of Flight, it was moved to Van Nuys for completion of the lengthy and meticulous restoration by Museum Trustee and Board Member Clay Lacy, at his facilities in Southern California.
The airplane, now completed, was flown from Van Nuys, California to Boeing Field in Seattle on 7 June 2007.
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Douglas DC-3 = TWA Airlines 1937 – 1939
-- Put in C47 skin folder ---
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Early U.S. airlines like United, American, TWA and Eastern ordered over 400 DC-3s. These fleets paved the way for the modern American air travel industry, quickly replacing trains as the favored means of long-distance travel across the United States.
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In 1934, following charges of favoritism in the contracts, the Air Mail scandal erupted, leading to the Air Mail Act of 1934 which dissolved the forced Transcontinental and Western merger and ordered the United States Army Air Service to deliver the mail. The T&WA name, however, would stick with Transcontinental as TWA. With the company facing financial hardship, Lehman Brothers and John D. Hertz took over ownership of the company.
The Army fliers experienced a series of crashes, and it was decided to privatize the delivery with the provision that no former companies could bid on the contracts. T&WA added the suffix "Inc." to its name, thus qualifying it as a different company and got 60 percent of its old contracts back starting again in May 1934.
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By 1938, Lehman and Hertz began selling their interest in TWA and General Motors began buying stock. Jack Frye (the new TWA president) then approached another flying enthusiast, Howard Hughes, to buy stock. According to John Keats's biography of Hughes, he grumbled, "$15 million! That's a small fortune!" before he agreed and initially bought 25 percent of the airline.
TWA was once again flying high.
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Douglas DC-3 = TWA Airlines 1941 + Carole Lombard Crash
---Put in C47 skin folder ---
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Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA) Flight 3 was a twin-engine Douglas DC-3 propliner, registration NC1946, operating as a scheduled domestic passenger flight from New York, NY to Burbank, CA via Indianapolis, IN, Saint Louis, MO, Albuquerque, NM and Las Vegas, NV.
At 04:00 local time on the morning of January 16, 1942, in Indianapolis, Indiana, Carole Lombard, her mother Elizabeth Knight, and her MGM press agent Otto Winkler, boarded Flight 3 to return to California. Lombard, anxious to meet her husband actor Clark Gable in Los Angeles, was returning from a successful War Bonds promotion tour in the Midwest, where she helped raise over US$2,000,000 (she would become the first female casualty of the U.S. war effort in the Second World War.)
Upon arrival in Albuquerque, Lombard and her companions were asked to give up their seats for the continuing flight segment, to make room for 15 U.S. Army Air Corps personnel flying to California. Lombard insisted that because of her War Bonds effort, she too was essential, and convinced the station agent to let her group re-board the flight. Other passengers were removed instead.
After a brief refueling stop at what is now Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, the plane took off on a clear night, for its final leg to Burbank. Fifteen minutes later, flying nearly seven miles off course, it crashed into a near vertical cliff on Potosi Mountain in the Spring Mountain Range at 7,770 ft, about 80 ft below the top of the cliff and 730 ft below the summit, killing all on board.
All nineteen passengers on board, including movie star Carole Lombard and her mother, and all three crew members, died in the crash.
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The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) investigated the accident and determined it was caused by a navigation error by the captain.
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Hope you have a great flight! ... don´t crash!
Cheers
MAX-theHitman
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B-29 = RAF Washington = 115 Squadron 1950-1954
-My Sincere apologies for uploading the wrong skins earlier.
There was a small problem with a RAF roundel in the underside of the wings.
I have now uploaded the correct skinpack, so please erase the previous ones and replace them with this new skinpack.
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The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber that was flown by the United States in World War II and the Korean War. The B-29 remained in service in various roles throughout the 1950s. The British Royal Air Force flew the B-29, named the "Washington" in RAF service.
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No. 115 Squadron RAF was a Royal Air Force squadron formed during World War I. It was then equipped with Handley Page heavy bombers. During World War II the squadron served as a bomber squadron and after the war it flew in a similar role till 1958, when it was engaged as a radio calibration unit.
After WW2 the squadron was linked to No. 218 Squadron RAF from 1949 until 1950, it then became a B-29 Washington unit at RAF Marham, again having No. 218 Squadron linked to it. Canberras replaced the B-29 Washingtons in February 1954 and continued in use until disbanding on 1 June 1957.
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5 Skinpack includes 4 historical 115 Squadron B-29 Washington´s + One No Squadron markings but with British roundels.
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I hope you have a great flight in IL-2
Cheers
MAX-theHitman